


Perpetuity

by fade_into_the_dusk_with_me



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Caitlin Todd centric, Gen, Sort Of, Um., but its happy i promise, i wrote this after 3am, not a fixit, nothing good happens after 3am. just go to sleep (hehe himym reference)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28055085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fade_into_the_dusk_with_me/pseuds/fade_into_the_dusk_with_me
Summary: um. sorry i killed everyone. is it bad that thats not a spoiler? (its not as cruel as it sounds - promise)
Relationships: Abby Sciuto & Caitlin Todd, Anthony DiNozzo & Caitlin Todd, Caitlin Todd & NCIS Team, Ducky Mallard & Caitlin Todd, Jethro Gibbs & Caitlin Todd, Team as Family - Relationship, Timothy McGee & Caitlin Todd, Ziva David/Tony DiNozzo mention, platonic ncis team, thats. like. it. sorry
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	Perpetuity

**Author's Note:**

> umm. ok. hi. this is the first fic i've actually finished, and i guess it's the first one i've posted. this was done in a frenzy of ncis 'twilight' pain - basically, i watched it, and then sat up for like 4 hours in the dark, being very tired and a little angsty, and this is the mutant child of that, so... *hides behind rock* let me know what you think? maybe? is it in anyway coherent?
> 
> Author’s note (if you can really call me that): this, in no way, reflects my beliefs about the afterlife, and i know i know , this has a whole bunch of canon errors and whatever, but some things ive done just. i dont know, because it just seemed to slot into place for me - i like the poeticism of it/the concept/the way it appeared in my head and i just rolled with it. Also, it was late when i wrote this, and i felt like i should probably have gone to sleep, but there are so many more characters i could include in this, and maybe i will, idk, but this feels very much like a onetime thing, just to vent some ‘kate deserved better’ feelings. I love all these characters, so i hope ive not been mean to them. I mean. I did kill them all, but not really . I mean. Oh shhhhh.  
> i own nothing - i am obviously nothing to do with ncis - i am but a sad little bean with sad little bean feelings that i then force on you lovely people :)  
> (tivaholic, thanks so much for everything x)

**here we go. my apologies in advance.**

* * *

Caitlin Todd. _Agent_. A limp figure on a rooftop. Eyes open. Smile not quite finished fading. Maybe someone was crying. Maybe it was just a bête noire. Maybe they’d all wake up soon. Tony drew back, blood glistening on his cheeks like jewels. Precious. Out of place.

Yes, _just a bête_ _noire_.

=================

Kate stood, feet on … something. She wasn’t cold. Not yet. She would be. 

For now, she could still feel the warmth of it - seeping out the cavity in the back of her skull that … wasn’t there. 

Should’ve been.

It hurt her eyes, all this light. _Well_ . It didn’t. Not _quite_. Phantom pain - a dead thing. Aching, just against the backs of her eyes. She felt like she’d been hurtled out of a catapult - whiplash, spinning head - feet on a ground they shouldn’t be touching. A world away from the ground she left. Her first thought is that she feels like she’s inside the Sun.

They were there when she got there - standing side-by-side, the little girl’s hand in that of the woman next to her. It’s like a wisp of memory she knows isn’t hers, this recognition. She doesn’t speak much. What could she say?

She can still feel the air, forced out of her lungs with the impact of the concrete. She can still feel the smile, pulling at her cheeks - the words on her tongue. 

The woman has flame-red hair, tears in her eyes - a smile catching them. A _fondness_ in it. Like the smile of a friend of a friend. Kate half-expects the words ‘ _I’ve heard a lot about you_ ’ to come next. Maybe she has. Maybe he talks to them, still. 

She imagines he does.

And she can see him, then - the echoes of life - _the past_ \- a crouching figure, not looking at her (he didn’t know her then), but smiling. He’s playing with her - the little girl - he’s dancing round them, almost - a greyed blur - _so this was the beginning, then, to the puzzle of Gibbs._

  
  


Ducky is the first. He’s older. Not much, but he is. He cups her face like a child’s and cries.

Ducky never cried. He calls her ‘Caitlin’. 

He insists on taking her arm - walking them together, the perfect gentleman. His step is a little hobbling, now, and she is hit, for a moment, by how much she’s missed. 

So they stop. They sit. And, innocently as a missed field trip, Ducky picks her up off the bloodied concrete, takes her hand with his words, and guides her through the years she could’ve had. 

He always was one for a good story.

  
  


Abby is … the same. She practically shrieks - it’s the most joyful sound Kate has heard in a long while. It sounds like her heart is bursting.

And she runs towards her like the sky is falling and clings - tears are smudging the eyeliner, tracing the stark green. Now that Kate sees her closer, she seems worn - a few more lines mark her face, and there’s less foundation paling her skin. But her smile is glowing bright as the air around them, and she thinks to herself that time has no hold on people like this. 

_People like this_ \- there was no one ‘like this’ - _Abby_.

She bursts with life. Even here. Words spill with eagerness out of her - stories, memories. She had forgotten how much she’d missed this. She laughs. She laughs so hard it hurts. _Almost_. She laughs so hard she ends up crying - sinking to the floor as her body’s racked with quiet sobs.

She’s reminded that Abby hugs really are magic.

Tony is a surprise. And she’s sad he’s here so soon. God he looks like … well. _Death_. Large dark circles encompass his eyelids, like inverted full moons. A little girl, attached to his hand - peering at her with eyes she doesn’t recognise and Tony’s half-smile.

 _Tali_ , he says.

It was a plane crash, he tells her - on their way to Paris. Relatively quick. She wasn’t frightened - she kept her eyes on the snippet of sky, flying by outside the window - she was smiling, Tony said, when they hit - babbling about rockets and clouds and Ima.

 _Ima_. He has to explain. 

She smiles to think of the great Anthony Dinozzo, playboy extraordinaire, flying his daughter to see a woman he would die for - _tamed_ , at last.

  
  


It’s fitting that Ziva’s next. Her dark eyes hold her daughter in them - swimming with tears, like dark snowglobes - and Kate recognises her in an instant. Dark hair cascades over one shoulder. The woman - this semi-stranger - smiles. 

_‘Kate, I believe_ ’, hand stuck out like the most average of introductions. There’s the inevitable exchange of stories, after that - Tony stories, naturally. But time passes and the new woman begins to get antsy.

 _‘My daughter’_ , she says, _‘will be waiting for me. I have many people waiting.’_

And Kate can’t tell if this pleases her, or if the thing seeping through the cracks in her sentences is loneliness - years of it.

  
  


Mcgee is staring when he gets there. At the sky, his feet - _anywhere but her_. 

She thinks he’s crying. It’s hard to see, though, with his eyes fixed on the ground. 

And then she’s _sure_ he’s crying - he’s shaking like his lungs are malfunctioning, and he shields his face with unsteady hands - tears are pouring over the cheeks of a man - a _man_ \- so much more so than she ever could have imagined - and for a minute she’s taken aback, at the bearded face - the solemnity behind the person, marred with battle-hardened experience. Who would have thought? _Probie_. 

_All grown up_. She chuckles - a puff of air, billowing like in winter, against the glowing gold of the atoms around them.

When she looks at him, something in the guilt of his eyes hits her.

_‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I never said goodbye.’_

It’s a small haunting - it’s nothing, now, but she understands. When she reaches up to hug him, he stoops a little - he collapses against her shoulder and she hears his muffled words: _‘sorry I didn’t name Morgan after you - I just, I ... ‘_

She gets that too. She tells him it’s ok. He’s ok.

  
  


Gibbs is last. Of course he is - marching through a world of explosions and snipers and muggings-gone-wrong - plane crashes and cancer and gunshot wounds - _untouched_. She sees his eyes, like a vault, unlock at the sight of them - they’ve been waiting.

All of them have. She sees all these pieces of him - here - _together_.

And they are complete.

It’s over. _They’re ok_.

===

**Author's Note:**

> i know there are issues with this - probably unrealistic that gibbs would die last, but i hated the thought of them going to his funeral, and it seems more 'gibbs' to be the one left behind, so i went with it. i know reeves would be before ducky, and i was going to include him, along with a lot of the others from later on in the series (who knows, i might change my mind and do a few more snippets), but, as i said, VERY late, and i thought i could go on forever if i did everyone. so imagine i wrote this like a decade ago. (but tack on the knowledge of mcgees kids). ALSO, sorry for what i did to tony and tali. but they're ok. :) so. sort of happy ending. i guess.


End file.
